Missing man’s body pulled from Russian River

A Southern California man on his first trip to Sonoma County drowned in the Russian River on Monday evening after going swimming at Sunset Beach with family members.

The county’s third drowning this year prompted Sonoma County officials to again implore people seeking to escape this week’s scorching temperatures to use extreme caution around Russian River beaches in particular.

“People from outside the area don’t understand the Russian River,” said David Robinson of Sonoma County Regional Parks. “What seems like a peaceful, shallow river is inherently dangerous.”

The drowning is especially tragic because it occurred on a beach where life jackets were being handed out by parks staff in the parking lot and in the water, Robinson said.

“It’s really sad because we try really, really hard,” Robinson said.

Searchers pulled the body of Gilberto Martinez, 40, from the river around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, shortly after family members who had searched in vain for him were informed of the tragic discovery.

Martinez, a construction worker, had been visiting family in Santa Rosa, said his brother-in-law, Juan Reyes, also from Southern California. He said Martinez was from Mexico and had lived in the city of Hawthorne in Los Angeles County for about 10 years.

Reyes said Martinez knew how to swim. He said their group went to the beach to cool off around 2 p.m. and at some point Martinez set off alone to explore the area upriver from the beach toward Hacienda Bridge.

Reyes said family members were more focused on the safety of the young children in the group, and it wasn’t until about 6 p.m. that they realized they hadn’t seen Martinez in a while. They searched for him in vain between the beach and the bridge.

“I thought maybe he got sleepy and got out and took a nap,” Reyes said.

He said he called for help around 7 p.m. Search teams, including area firefighters and a CHP helicopter, started a brief search but called it off because of darkness.

The search, led by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, resumed Tuesday morning. It included members of the county’s volunteer dive team, firefighters from the Forestville Fire Protection District and others. They focused their efforts upriver of the beach.

Before the body was discovered, Reyes said the family was hopeful Martinez had gotten out of the water somewhere. But they also feared the worst, noting that he was wearing only a pair of shorts, and his wallet and cellphone remained on the beach. Reyes said the group had come in one vehicle and planned to drive back to the Los Angeles area Monday night.

A firefighter in a kayak and four divers entered the water Tuesday morning around 10 a.m., and after about 20 minutes of searching signaled they’d located something in about 5 feet of water about 60 feet from the beach and just 15 feet from the north bank.

A few minutes later, officials went to speak with family members who had been sitting in the shade of some small trees, and some began sobbing. The group was escorted up to the parking lot while divers maneuvered Martinez’s body into a black bag and carried it up the steep bank to an awaiting pickup.

His body was taken to the nearby Cal Fire station for the family to make a positive identification. The coroner plans to conduct an autopsy, Sgt. Pete Quartarolo said.

The drowning brings to three the number of people who have died in Sonoma County waterways this year. The other two drowned on the Fourth of July.

Marquette Gross, 14, died after falling off an inflatable water toy being towed across Lake Sonoma on the same day 20-year-old Jose Campos-Campos perished in the Russian River near Monte Rio Beach. Neither knew how to swim and neither was wearing a life jacket, officials have said.

Sunset Beach is particularly perilous because the slope of the beach appears deceptively gradual. In fact, there are snags and steep drop-offs that can surprise swimmers and waders caught unaware.

“You can walk and swim and walk and swim and then all of sudden you can’t walk anymore,” Robinson said.

The river bottom changes every year so even people who think they know the location well enough need to use extreme caution, he said.

Following a spike in drownings on the river in 2012, the county sought to augment its local outreach programs by connecting with people on the river who might be from out of town and without access to local swim lessons.

The Russian River Water Safety Patrol pairs a park ranger with two open-water lifeguards to educate people about water safety at the most popular county river beaches.

They try to sell people on the wisdom of wearing life jackets, but inevitably some people will pass on the offer thinking the jackets aren’t “cool.”

“The cool thing to do is to go home at the end of the day,” Robinson said.

The county has tried other measures to increase awareness, such as temporary signs near the water’s edge and handouts warning people of the perils. But those techniques were curtailed in part because they created significant litter, Robinson said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.